


All is Well

by thymewitch



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Grief/Mourning, One Shot, Short One Shot, hiking cures all apparently, really short
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-26
Updated: 2014-07-26
Packaged: 2018-02-10 12:25:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,112
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2025075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thymewitch/pseuds/thymewitch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When his brother had left him (torn from his mind and world in a mere moment), he had felt the call of the forested paths and glades of his home. It had ached along the jagged edges of his consciousness where his brother had once belonged.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All is Well

**Author's Note:**

> Raleigh doesn't really deal with his feelings and the loss of his brother at all in the movie, which always bothers me, so I decided that I would write something of my own to make up for that in a flash of inspiration that struck me while hiking through the mountains of the French alps.

There is a quiet space into which the mind can settle when you are walking. Your legs begin to swing in a steady rhythm and once the burn of exhaustion fades, you are left with just the dragging of breath into your lungs and the thrumming of your heart. It frees your thoughts to wander on their own, flowing from one strand to another without allowing the mind to focus too long or too painfully on any specific whisper in the flow. Raleigh had experienced this on many occasions, on hikes with his brother (pacing up the path with no need to exchange words) or just wandering off into the hills behind their family house. 

When his brother had left him (torn from his mind and world in a mere moment), he had felt the call of the forested paths and glades of his home. It had ached along the jagged edges of his consciousness where his brother had once belonged. But there were walls to build and wars to fight, so he tried to dull the pain with mind-numbing work. Walls rose and men fell and when he was called to fight again, he did, because that's what Yancy would have done and because there was still a small part of him that felt like maybe if he went he wouldn't come back. 

Then there was someone else in his mind, and she felt the broken edges, and she knew.

"When this is over, we will go back." Mako's eyes were solemn as she watched him. He nodded. She had heard his brother's whispers in his head, and she knew what they meant, perhaps more than he did himself. 

Once the rift was closed, going home was put on hold; there was paperwork to fill out and questions to answer over and over again until the world was satisfied. Finally, someone saw fit to release them from the dizzying circus, setting them up with transport and money to get where they wanted to go.

"Home?" Mako asked, a small smile tugging at her mouth as she tasted the word. 

The corners of Raleigh's eyes crinkled in return. "Home."

As the plane passed over the pine- and snow-covered mountains, Raleigh pressed his nose against the glass of the window. Mako leaned around him, solid against his shoulder as she drank in her first glimpses of the place that was so much a part of her partner.

Raleigh had to drive because Mako didn't have an American driver's licence, and the rental car people didn't understand the concept that despite her accent Mako could drive their cars as well as, if not better than, Raleigh could. Raleigh had argued with them (Mako protesting that she really didn't mind, had only wanted to spare Raleigh the concentration, since he hadn't slept at all on the plane) before giving up and promising that she could drive his car once they retrieved it from storage. 

Yancy had insisted on keeping their old family house even after their parents had died, even when Raleigh had claimed that he would rather just sell it; that had been a lie, of course, and Yancy had known it, because they had always known what the other was thinking, even before they drifted. 

When he pulled into the familiar driveway, it took almost all his willpower not to jump out immediately and flee to the welcoming green of the trees, but Mako was there and they needed to unpack the car before eating something and by then it would almost certainly be too dark. 

Raleigh gave Mako the grand tour of the house and she followed him, listening to his stories with a small smile. Images from his childhood flickered through the rooms, pixelated and misty with flashes of colour, like latent drift images. 

He tried to sleep but every time he closed his eyes he could feel his brother behind his lids, laughing or screaming he couldn't tell. Mako was fast asleep beside him, exhausted by the long journey from the Shatterdome where they had been living for the past months purely for convenience's sake. Her face was peaceful, lacking the small frown that he noted had often graced her features. He watched her for a while, trying to slow his breathing to match hers.

Raleigh rose at first light, moving carefully in an attempt not to wake his partner, and headed out into the woods. The scent of crushed pine needles filled the air as he hiked up the familiar path, feet taking him along the track. His steps were uneven and hesitant at first, fumbling on loose rocks, but soon the steady rhythm kicked in and the sharp burning in his calves turned to a warm ache of exercise as his mind cleared of all excess thought.

"Finally. Took you long enough," Yancy's voice laughed quietly from behind him. 

Raleigh scrunched his eyes closed, a smile tugging at his lips as a tear slipped down his face before he could stop it. "Hey Yancy."

A lot of people wondered what happened when your drift partner died. There had been bets going with all the recruits when Raleigh and Yancy had signed up. Most figured that the other part of you, the part that had been your co-pilot, just disappeared, but a few had thought that maybe some of their consciousness survived, kept safe inside the mind of the survivor. No one had ever really had the chance to ask. Most of the time if one pilot died, the other did too, either in the same instant, or later, of shock.

Yancy's death had happened so suddenly, for a long time after he hadn't wanted to face anything to do with it; he had wanted to run away from the pain, to rid himself of it. For a while he had thought that the other voice in his head was his imagination and when it persisted, insanity was the next theory; he knew that sometimes pilots went crazy after their drift partner died, so it wasn't too far of a leap to assume that he too was losing his mind. Now he knew he wasn't. He had been given the chance to say goodbye that had been stolen from him.

Mako was waiting for him when he returned, fingers wrapped around a mug of steaming coffee. "All is well?"

Raleigh's features were truly relaxed for the first time since Mako had met him. He grinned, kissed her lightly on the nose and swiped a sip of her coffee before answering. "All is indeed well. Why don't we go see if there's anything even vaguely edible in this old shack?"'


End file.
